'An Old Hullo Out of the Dark': Radio Echoes between Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020) - Jeffery, Lucy
Abstract : Radio provided Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter with new ways of experimenting with voice, silence, and absence. As they maximised radio's potential to explore the ephemerality of language and non-linear narratives, the works they created were concerned with the medium itself. On radio, Beckett's silences and Pinter's pauses create a heightened sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. Their medium-conscious works also provided them with a platform through which they could experiment with their shared frustration with the inaccuracies of language. The article explores Pinter's interest in Beckett's work by drawing on Pinter's letters to Richard Seaver, Patrick Magee, and Mick Goldstein from the Harold Pinter Archive. It then shows how Pinter's own work is intermedial in its experimentation with new technologies such as radio. By pointing to examples within Pinter's Landscape (1968) that speak to moments in Beckett's Embers (1959), the parallels between these writers in their use of radio are identified. Finally, the article suggests that Pinter's work is not merely derivative of Beckett's but demonstrates how the radio drama of both writers is underwritten by an intermedial creative process.